By: Ajay Parasram 
What should have been a simple case of Ottawa conceding an error in stripping citizenship from Canadian-born Deepan Budlakoti is turning into a Charter of Rights and Freedoms challenge. This is due to the Harper government’s refusal to accept evidence confirming Budlakoti’s status as a Canadian citizen.
“The legal team is in the process of getting a Charter application completed,” Budlakoti told the Leveller.
A Charter application, or challenge, is a court case where a Canadian citizen argues that his or her rights as outlined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (CCRF) have been violated.
To support his case, Budlakoti has been trying to get access to government documents concerning his case using Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) requests.
“I’ve put in 54 ATIP requests so far, and only received responses from five. A lot of ATIPs are getting modified or changed. They’re blocking information under sections 19, 18, 17, 21, 22, and 28 of the Privacy Act,” he said.
According to an email sent from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada, retrieved by one of the five received ATIP requests, Ottawa continues to insist Budlakoti is an Indian citizen, even when the Indian government has informed them that he is not.
Part of the email stated, “Mr. Deepan Budlakoti was born in 1989 in Canada to Indian citizens who were working for the Indian High Commission. As they had diplomatic immunity, even though Deepan was issued a birth certificate by Ontario, Canada considers him an Indian citizen. His parents left their job at the Indian High Commission shortly after Deepan’s birth.”
That information is verifiably false, according to Budlakoti.
“We got a letter from S.J.S. Chhatwal, the former High Commissioner of India to Canada at the time of my parents’ employment,” Budlakoti told the Leveller. “The letter confirms that my parents did not work [for the High Commission of India] ‘in any capacity’ after June 12, 1989. I was born in October. Therefore, my parents had no diplomatic privileges or status whatsoever and by birth I am automatically a citizen [of Canada].”
This letter was given to the press, the Canada Border Services Agency, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and the immigration critics of both the NDP and Liberal parties.
“According to [the Indian government] and three different lawyers in India, it’s impossible for me to be a citizen of India at this time,” he said.
Under Indian law, nationals must register children born abroad within two years of birth to ensure their eligibility for citizenship. By this time, Budalkoti’s parents had decided to make their home in Canada permanent and saw no reason to register their Canadian-born son with India.
Under Canadian law, Budlakoti is a citizen of Canada because the 1977 Citizenship Act stipulates under Section 8 that a person born on Canadian soil is Canadian, unless his/her parents are working for a foreign government at the time of his birth. Children have this right by the legal principle of jus soli (right of soil) even if they do not have jus sanguinis (right of blood, i.e., ancestral ties to Canada).
The evidence of Budlakoti’s citizenship based on his parents’ employment status with the High Commission of India calls into question Ottawa’s motivation for ignoring it.
Ottawa has been informed that India does not recognize Budlakoti as a citizen, and has been served evidence that Budlakoti’s family did not have diplomatic immunity at the time of his birth. Stripping his Canadian citizenship by right of soil therefore renders him stateless.
Rather than correcting its error, Ottawa has been issuing documents claiming Budlakoti is an Indian. Budlakoti’s legal team filed a Mandamus application, forcing the government to issue him a work visa or disclose information concerning the case. Within 10 days, a work visa was issued, but as Budlakoti notes, “the permit says that I am an Indian citizen. This is wrong information. It should say that I am stateless. But they are consistently trying to issue documents stating that I am Indian, which is contrary to what is actually happening: I’m stateless.”
Canada is one of 53 states that have ratified the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which deals specifically with children’s rights at birth to have citizenship and to avoid the loss of their citizenship if that loss would result in the person becoming stateless. Additionally, Article 15 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates that all humans have the right to a nationality and to not be deprived of that nationality arbitrarily.
“It’s funny how Canada’s system allows the government to make errors, but it seems like they are not responsible for the errors they make,” Budlakoti said. “If they cause an administrative error, should they not be responsible for rectifying the issue? They told me for 20 years that I am a citizen and now after 20 years I’m not a citizen? Completely outrageous.”
This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol. 6, No. 2 (Oct/Nov 2013).
